Weekly Discussion

Why does everyone buy expensive smartphones?
Ilia Temelkov
Ilia Temelkov
Phonearena team
original poster
We ran a poll across our , and , asking people about the price of the last phone they purchased. The majority of the 1100 people who participated didn’t buy cheap phones. More precisely, 42% spent over $900 on their last smartphone purchase, and just 14% went for budget options under $300. This finding contrasts starkly with a common sentiment we see when we cover the most expensive smartphones on the market. Often, people claim that companies like Apple and Samsung are crossing some limits of what consumers are willing to pay for their products. Some claim cheaper devices provide a similar user experience to the most expensive flagships. We’re not the first to discover people’s love for premium smartphones. Consumer reports that the top-tier Samsung and Apple models are also the best-selling. This raises a simple question - why? In the context of the economic fluctuations, the perceived lack of meaningful innovation, and the growing prices of smartphones, why do so many people spend so much on smartphones? Is it the belief that a more expensive device will last longer? Or is it all about vanity, and pricey phones are used more as a status symbol? If you’re one of the people who own a premium smartphone, what made you choose it over the cheaper options? Would you consider a different price segment for your next purchase? Share all your thoughts on smartphone pricing, we’re eager to hear all your thoughts.
How much did you pay for your current smartphone?
Community poll
How much did you pay for your current smartphone?
Community Highlights
Tmosaysbendover
Tmosaysbendover says:
Was a Sr Manager in the retail channel and quit in January due to their complete and utter disregard of their employees and customers. 16 years with the Company. Great years up until to the Sprint merger. They killed all operational support in Sept. Put it all on the field which is already overworked. Then started raising quotas to where it was nearly impossible to make a decent check. Then the employees started slamming features and lines on accounts so they could make money. Upper Mgmt turned a blind eye to it. This from a company that prided itself on being customer and employee centric. No longer. They got their merger with Sprint and gave a big Middle Finger to the govt, its customers and the employees. There will be a special place in hell reserved for Mike Sievert and Jon Freier.
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T-Mobile customers no longer feel that they are put first by company; many plan their exit

JoshJoestar
JoshJoestar says:
I'm also a T-Mobile sales rep under a 3rd party retailer (Not corporate) Making an account just to comment. Very thankful that this is becoming more known 👍 Our district has heavily discouraged upgrading customers as well simply as a way of maintaining metrics. Reps don't see it as being worth their time because commission incentive is only fifty cents per upgrade if you're not getting those extras (plan change, insurance, accessories, watch, etc) I've been with this company for over three years and am currently working out my last two weeks. I've been struggling to pay bills for the past half a year and to be told that we're not watching numbers closely enough is unbelievably disheartening, especially when you're spending 1-2 hours helping a customer just to be paid half a dollar. As someone else stated in the comments, we're really not trying to be rude or mean, we just don't want to get fired for disobeying or throwing off sales numbers.
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T-Mobile rep says he convinces some consumers not to buy phones from him

TheRealDuckofDeath
TheRealDuckofDeath says:
Useless is maybe an exaggeration, but they are monumentally overpriced. All thanks to the industry's constant antitrust abuses no authority takes seriously. The main offender, as usual, being Apple; locking everybody else out from core necessities while gimping their watch on any other platform. 5-700 bucks for a watch with a tiny display, a few moderately accurate sensors, a cheap processor, a battery, and a few grams of mass-produced metal and sapphire doesn't cost anything near that to make. There is no longevity in the products either, so the "timepiece argument" goes out the window with the industry's chronic planned obsolescence.
Smartwatches are useless. Change my mind!

Smartwatches are useless. Change my mind!

Chuck007
Chuck007 says:
Depends how you define the world, but if you ask me, nearly nothing is "safe" these days. When major companies benefit from using our usage records/data to further manipulate us into spending more to finance their further intrusive and greedy practices (like AI without proper regulation and incentive to improve the craft of creators), unfortunately nothing short of disconnecting society will let you escape from recent trends. It stopped being about personal privacy and pleasing customers decades ago. Global recession have created a trend where companies are desperate enough to push technologies without caring much about the repurcussions. Unfortunately, thinking companies like Apple are knights in shining armor is the sort of niavety that will push the top 5% into being richer and the middle class into oblivion.
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Researcher answers the age-old question: which platform is more secure, iOS or Android?

MsPooks
MsPooks says:
I keep saying it: Huawei doesn't need anything faster than what it has. It's trouncing ALL of its competitors without gimmicky cutting-edge chips. Comments here and in similar articles only validate my opinion. 😏
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Huawei's new Kirin 9010 SoC shows huge performance gap compared to older Snapdragon chip

trakk8
trakk8 says:
Long form videos is a good idea.But vision pro won't replace iPhone.These kind of devices will replace televisions,gaming consoles and possibly PC's and tablets. The quest pro 2 will do it first. It is in talks with LG to do that in various ways. Or so I have read. The thing that will replace phones is of course rollables and later rollables will evolve into strap-on ( to the wrist) bendable phones. I remember talking about this earlier too here. Later smart spectacles will replace phones, after that smart contacts then after that implanted chips in the brain by 2040. Edit: Or smart specs could exist alongside wrist strap-on phones by the end of this decade as a replacement to current phones. Then next decade smart contacts. These could be used as topics too for your video series down the line.
Will Vision Pro replace the iPhone? PhoneArena launches long-form video show

Will Vision Pro replace the iPhone? PhoneArena launches long-form video show

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